(Out) On the Road Excerpt: Travel and Gender Identity Essay

Gender Identity Essay Excerpted from (Out) On the Road: The Radical Joy of Queer Travel

The TSA officers always thought I was hiding something. “What’s under your shirt?” they’d ask, pulling me aside after I exited the airport body scanner.

“Nothing.”

“What’s under your shirt?” they’d repeat. Then they’d pull at the fabric of my shirt or pat my shoulder. “Here—what is that?”

That was my boobs.

Because airport body scanners used to code travelers on binary gender, a TSA officer had to pick a button—pink or blue—every time a passenger approached.  If they selected the pink button for me, I’d pass the scan; if they selected blue, I’d fail and be pulled aside to have my chest frisked. 

Nonbinary Passports Explained

My passport had an F gender marker. Most nonbinary Americans have a binary gender marker on their identification, for a number of reasons.

It wasn’t until April 2022 that Americans were given a gender-neutral passport option. Since then, approximately 1.4 percent of nonbinary Americans—or around 16,700 people—apply for X gender passports each year. (As I write this, the future of X gender passports and driver’s licenses is in flux, part of a broader campaign of suppression and erasure. Skip ahead to chapter five for a rundown of the dystopian maze LGBTQ+ Americans and international travelers to the US are forced to navigate these days.)

Travelers with X gender markers in their passports risk being turned away from countries that do not recognize third genders. Currently, just seventeen countries offer legal recognition of nonbinary or third genders. An X gender passport also reveals that the holder is nonbinary, outing people whether they want to or not.

When did gender markers first appear on passports?

Gender markers on passports are relatively new; they were not included on US passports until 1976. As recently as 2012, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) considered removing gender markers from passports (source: Truthout).

The ICAO ultimately decided to keep them, suggesting that a gender marker could help a border official verify someone’s identity with a quick visual scan. However, that logic presumes that all people present at all times in ways that match their gender marker, and that all border control officials in all countries share a working definition of the characteristics that define “male” or “female” in a visual inspection.

I’m reminded of a trip I took through San Ysidro, a pedestrian bridge between San Diego and Tijuana. I handed my passport over to the border guard and waited. The man behind the desk leered at me. Then he leaned over and tugged at my loose tank top. “What’s in here?” he sneered.

I glared at him. “Nothing. It’s my shirt.”

He sighed and stamped my passport.

Is gender a useful category for passports?

Dress, personal grooming, and aesthetics differ based on tradition, religion, and social norms; thus, it is not possible to hold the world to one standard for male or female.

Attempts at doing so are dangerous for gender nonconforming people, and to the broader concept of cultural variation.

Spencer Garcia, a queer, trans and nonbinary Afro-Puerto Rican writer and consultant, writes in Truthout that “relying on the fluid category of gender as a determining factor for verifying someone’s identity is nowhere near as helpful or as accurate as identifying someone by more concrete characteristics, such as their height, eye color or date of birth.”

Nonbinary Airport Anxiety Explained

Waiting in the airport security line, my palms would start to sweat. My heart would race. I’d wonder whether I’d be read as female and get a break, or if my short hair and sweatshirt-and-jeans travel uniform would trigger yet another patdown focused on my chest and hips. 

Approaching the front of the security line, I’d try to smile—or at least soften my aloof resting face, performing unthreatening female passivity for the usually male screening officer.

I had no idea that the body scanners were binary gender coded until I read an op-ed in the New York Times. Before then, I didn’t know what the underlying issue was. I blamed myself, imagining a personal flaw, since other travelers seemed to pass through with ease.

Learning why I kept failing scans was deeply healing. 

It cut through layers of shame and humiliation and gave me back my personal power. I wasn’t inherently suspicious; I was being misgendered. The problem wasn’t me; it was a system that was never designed for people like me.

Whenever the scanners flagged me as a potential threat, an officer would pat me down, paying extra attention to my hips and chest area. Pretty soon, they’d realize they guessed wrong, send me back through the scanner, and press the pink button.

As humiliating as those incidents were, I got off easy. Trans travelers have been whisked away to private rooms, where they’ve been treated rudely or pressured to expose their bodies in order to clear security.

Bias in Airport Screenings: Who Is Affected?

Of course, gender variant travelers aren’t the only ones who face extra scrutiny at checkpoints.

For years, Black women with natural hair faced secondary screening because body scanners weren’t programmed to read their twists or dreadlocks.

Muslim travelers may be pulled aside for extra questioning due to Islamophobic bias.

Parents and children with different last names are treated with skepticism and may be asked to show a birth certificate to prove their relationship. As with queer travelers, the rude questions and odd looks don’t always end when these people get to their destinations.

Raising awareness about the ways that our assumptions about what’s typical are, in fact, anything but neutral, is an important first step to unlearning bias, and undoing the harm it causes.

Airport Anxiety What Does it Look Like?

My anxiety over how I’d be perceived, and thus treated, didn’t start at the airport, but began weeks earlier. I’d check the weather and my itinerary, set aside a big stack of clothing, and whittle it down, weighing my comfort and authenticity against my desire for safety and acceptance.

If I got the balance just right, mixing feminine-coded items with more neutral or masculine ones, I could fly under the radar.

That meant fewer microaggressions to endure and less chance of a shame spiral as I picked apart my wardrobe choices and wondered if the series of brutal calculations I had to make to navigate public spaces would ever end. Even though previous experience taught me that how others perceived me was outside of my control, I still believed otherwise.

Reclaiming Our Power As Nonbinary Travelers

Amid rising transphobia, it can feel like the wise option for nonbinary travelers and trans folks is to recede from public view: to replace the X gender marker identification with an unthreatening M or F, to stick to safe spaces, to wear the proper uniform and blend in.

But what if our aesthetics could invite others into more nuanced and expressive ways of performing their gender? What if we could inspire people to rethink the rigid set of labels and norms that disempower all of us—cis men and women, too?

Abroad, I’m seen as a white foreigner first and an individual person later; in many destinations, being white gives me unearned privilege.

There is comfort in anonymity after experiencing heightened scrutiny. I move through life assuming that people see me as a gender nonconforming woman because I’m seldom prevented from entering women’s spaces or addressed as sir. A visit to the south of France showed me a different story, which set me free in surprising ways.

In France, it’s customary to say bonjour to the clerk whenever you enter a store. Each time my partner and I entered a shop, we would use that greeting.

The clerk would reply in one of two ways: “Bonjour, mesdames” meant they perceived us as two women; “Bonjour, monsieur, madame” meant they read me as male and my partner as female.

Shop visits became gender reveals. I got sirred about half the time—including when I wore a tank top, with bra straps hanging out. 

During past vacations, I hoped to fly under the radar and fit in, one more foreign tourist in a sea of visitors. For me, blending in conveyed safety. On the rare occasion when my gender mattered—shopping for clothing, or visiting a thermal pool—I became anxious and tense. 

Afffirming Travel Experiences for Nonbinary People

France gave me a new perspective. People would see me however they perceived me—and if I couldn’t control it, maybe I didn’t need to spend so much time and energy thinking about it. Whether I was greeted as monsieur or madame, I was treated with courtesy and respect. The experience helped me to drop my guard, step into newfound confidence, and most of all, have fun.

Eris has had similar moments of joy.

On a beach trip to Malta, they found easygoing acceptance no matter where they went or what they wore.

Eris’s partner is Greek, and they’ve visited Greece together several times. Because they are in a familiar place and accompanied by someone with local ties, Eris feels safe showing off their fun and playful personal style.

They tell me about a new outfit they got, a matching shirt and shorts set printed with anime stills from Cardcaptor Sakura. “It’s anime frames in a childlike, hideous, busy pink with a bowling shirt collar and shorts above the knee,” they say.“I’m really looking forward to wearing that outfit.”

While there’s no one right way to look nonbinary, and nonbinary people don’t owe the world a performance of androgyny to prove their nonbinaryness, we should be able to dress in ways that feel abundant and joyful, rather than restrained, neutral, or safe.

“I like putting together an outfit and looking cool, but when I’m preparing, I am really, really deliberate about the outfits that I choose and how the clothing presents,” Eris says. “I like offering the people who see me a little bit of ambiguity and playfulness.”

I love that Eris thinks about their gender expression as both a gift to themselves and one they want to share with the world. Our aesthetic choices don’t have to be toned down for others’ comfort or our safety. We can shine.

On our French vacation, my partner and I took a perfume workshop. We learned about the history of fragrances and blended up our own signature scents to take home.

The opportunity to create a custom scent was instantly appealing for obvious reasons; perfume reinforces gender stereotypes in every aspect of its creation, from the underlying scent profile to the packaging and marketing.

As excited as I was to craft my own signature scent, I was also a little nervous. Would the workshop environment be supportive of someone like me? Or would it feel performatively female in the way heavily-gendered spaces sometimes do, and an instant turn-off?

I needn’t have worried.

We were given several scent samples to smell and told to pick our favorite to use as the base. To this base formula, we could add any of thirty different scents. The options ranged from woodsy to spicy to floral to herbal, from strong to subtle.

I chose a woodsy base then lightened up the masculine scent by adding rose and fig. One drop at a time, I created my perfect blend.

Our instructor moved through the room, guiding us through the process. She sniffed our fragrances and offered suggestions: another ten drops of this, a touch more of that. She was the master nose, there to evaluate our efforts and help us arrive at our ideal fragrance.

When I finished tweaking and adjusting, I called her over one last time. She put her nose to my inner arm, closed her eyes, and inhaled deeply. “Yes,” she said, beaming. 

My French perfume sits on my dresser. Whenever I need adornment, I spritz myself. It’s a sensory reminder of my innate shining that nobody can take from me.

Resource Yourself for Gender-Nonconforming Travel

Being singled out over your appearance can be humiliating and frustrating.

I hope this chapter has helped you realize you are not alone, and that the personal stories shared here provide validation and affirmation.

We all deserve the space to show up and be witnessed with courtesy and respect, regardless of our gender identity, gender expression, or pronouns. 

Until the world accepts the diversity of gender expressions, we have to be our own best advocates.

This means protecting ourselves, whether by skipping unsafe destinations or joining Global Entry or TSA PreCheck for a better airport experience, or learning how to be unapologetic in our advocacy. 

One thing I love about queer culture is our creativity and boundless capacities for reinvention.

We question everything. We push back at mainstream cultural narratives that write us out of the storyline, challenge false binaries, and show up in our authentic brilliance.

We create space for others to move through the world freely. While I wish we didn’t have to do this work, I’m confident that we have the skills for it.

Every ask gives us back a bit of personal power gender rigidity has stolen from us. Every ask makes us stronger, individually and collectively. Every ask makes it likelier the next person who walks through the door will be welcomed as they are. 

The three steps below will help you evaluate a scenario, reflect on your wants and needs, and be your strongest advocate.

Work through them for your next trip, and revisit them often.

Step 1: Research your destination

Look up the place you’re visiting.

Do a quick scan of the laws and attitudes around gender identity, including nonbinary and transgender identities, since these can tell you a lot about local attitudes toward gender variance. 

Your goal is to understand that society’s viewpoint in order to better understand how your specific gender identity and presentation will impact your visit.

If you don’t have a destination picked out, explore places that celebrate gender variance and build a bucket list for future trips.

These links will get you started:

• Equaldex: Legal Recognition of Nonbinary Gender

• PBS: A Map of Gender-Diverse Cultures

• Our World in Data: Third Gender Legally Recognized

• Asher & Lyric’s Global Trans Rights Index 

Step 2: Reflect on what you want

Although it’s not fun to contemplate what could go wrong, the point of this exercise isn’t to dwell in fear—it’s to plan and prepare so that you’re not thrown by a wrong assumption or misgendering, you have a script to fall back on.

Pull out your notebook and work through the following questions for an upcoming trip.

If you’re most concerned with coming out, the next chapter dives into whether, when, and how to do that—or not, if that’s the right call at the moment. 

Some of these prompts might make you angry, and that’s okay! Anger is a rational response to queerphobia, bias, and microaggressions.

Venting is healing—but it probably won’t get you the outcome you want because it tends to put people on the defensive. You’re more likely to be heard when you speak from a position of strength grounded in integrity. In addition to the situations listed below, feel free to add anything that feels relevant to your situation:

• I’m nervous about __________________________

• I’m excited about ___________________________

• What will I do/say if someone scrutinizes me because the gender marker on my identification doesn’t match my gender presentation?

• What will I do/say if I’m misgendered in a public space?

• What will I do/say if someone accuses me of being in the wrong bathroom or locker room?

• What can I expect if traveling with gender-affirming medication, devices or prosthetics? Do I want to carry a letter from a doctor, explanation card, or other supporting documentation?

• What precautions can I take for my comfort, like packing an extra outfit in my carry-on in case the airline loses my luggage so I don’t have to go shopping in an unfamiliar city?

Step 3: Debrief your travel partner(s)

Traveling with a friend, relative, or partner? Talk to them how your identity could impact your trip. At minimum, discuss anything that’ll be different from how you usually interact at home. Say you’re very open about being nonbinary in daily life but on this trip, you’d rather share only if directly asked, like Eris does. Your travel companion needs to know this so that they can honor your boundaries.

Want to explore the themes of this gender identity essay more deeply? My LGBTQ+ travel guide (Out) On the Road unpacks similar topics, from coming out and advocating for yourself to uplifting travel experiences that affirm gender identity and sexual orientation! It’s available everywhere books are sold.